The islanders arrive in Piraeus

‘Each island had its own coffee shop at the port, the people from Symi had their coffee shop, the people from Santorini had theirs, so did the people from Tinos, and so on. That’s where you went to see people from your own island, to get the latest news, that’s where the ship delivered your packages and sometimes even your letters. That’s also where all the newcomers from each island went when they first arrived in Piraeus. Even if they didn’t have a relative to put them up and help them during those first few days, the coffee shop served that purpose’ (interview with Merkouris Kyramargios, Merkouris Kyramargios’ grandson and namesake, 18.12.2009).

Thousands of people from the Aegean islands and Crete arrived in the city of Piraeus the first years after its establishment. Some of the city’s first neighbourhoods in the 19^th century were established by migrants from Hydra and Crete, while the neighbourhoods of the people from Santorini and Symi were created in the 20^th century. Migrants invited their compatriots and encouraged their migration and this is how entire neighbourhoods populated with people from the same island started cropping up all over Piraeus and the nearby settlements. These neighbourhoods reminded the migrants of their homeland, offering them a sense of security and familiarity in the new life they were setting up in Piraeus, working in the large factories, the port and elsewhere. Even though it was different life paths, trajectories and expectations that brought these islanders to Piraeus in the 19^th and 20^th century, they still shared some common migration motives: unemployment and poverty on the island as well as the hope of a better life for themselves and their families.

Merkouris Kyramargios was born in 1876 in Symi, an island of the Dodecanese which was under Italian rule at the time. Before he even turned 20, he travelled to Egypt with his brother Nikitas to work in port development projects at Port Said. He migrated to Egypt to work three or four more times and always returned to see his family and the children he had had with his wife, Foteini. In 1915, at the age of 39, he decided to leave for America and New York. He left his wife and their six children back in Symi, packed all his belongings in a wooden chest and made his way to Piraeus. He left for the United States on the ocean liner Patris on February 28, 1916. He reached Ellis Island on March 21, 1916. His Ellis Island immigration records provide some information about Merkouris and his migration journey. He paid for the journey himself, he had an extra 25 dollars on him, and he would be supported during those first few days in a new country by his friend Pantelis Marikakis who lived in New York. He was a worker and he was literate. He was deemed healthy, he was 177 cm tall, had brown eyes and hair and dark skin.

According to family narratives, he worked mainly as a builder for ten years and returned to Symi in 1926, carrying the same wooden chest and 1,000 gold coins. His goal was to return to America soon after accompanied by his older sons, but for some reason this didn’t happen. They all reunited in Piraeus, at the Symi neighbourhood in Drapetsona, where he bought a football pitch and divided it into four land plots, one for each of his remaining children. Initially, the family lived together and rented the makeshift dwellings built on the other plots. Merkouris and his sons worked in construction, essentially making up an entire construction crew: Merkouris and his son, Vasilis, were builders, Giorgas was a plasterer and Michalis a carpenter. Merkouris Kyramargios put down roots in Drapetsona and had the chance to see his family grow and his children get married and have their own children. He died in Drapetsona in 1949. Most of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren still live in the houses built on the land that Merkouris bought with the gold coins he brought back from America, while his photograph from Egypt graces their houses even though most of his descendants are not aware of his life story.